Foreign Language Week in English

Citizens panic over Pledge of Allegiance in "the language of the enemy."

Thanx to kaffyr

"like beginning the process of electing a pope at Chuck E. Cheese"

I am not good at deferring gratification. I am currently itching & twitching waiting a month for the NFL Draft, but I can feel relatively sane: When I go to the sites devoted to it, I see a few projections of the 2016 draft, about which we know absolutely nothing except that it's likely to take place in 2016. We as a nation do not pass the marshmallow test.

Speculation on the 2016 presidential election (which will take place after the 2016 NFL Draft) likewise began some time before the 2012 election. To throw some raw meat to the devotees of the process, each pre-Presidential year the state of Iowa holds a series of caucuses to assign a tiny fraction of delegates, and the Republican candidates are now eagerly crawling in pursuit of those. Charles Pierce looks at the whole tiresome business. (He also notes that even NASCAR is grossed out by Indiana's Right-to-hate law.)

Credo

In American politics today, I'm a dangerous leftist, which is to say, a Lyndon Johnson Great Society liberal. But that's only in domestic politics. Internationally, I'd support Nixon: Lie our way out of messy wars and talk to the people we're supposed to hate.